HugeOgre said:
Hmmm, well I always thought it was a bit of a longshot that LB would actually post on Christmas, but I cant deny that I WAS hoping... Im guessing the eggnog done him in.
Heh, just got back from visiting family... VERY full.
But yes, I have an update ready to go, and a full week planned, so...
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Chapter 67
OF STONE AND FLESH
Dar heard Varo’s warning clearly, but he had no idea what it meant.
“What?” he yelled.
“Kill the chickens!” the mage shouted. “Now!”
Dar was a bit confused—after all, the creatures looked weird, but there was a freaking invisible
wizard right behind them—but they had survived a number of fights through Varo’s instincts and knowledge thus far, and in any case, he couldn’t get to the spellcaster right now anyway.
The chicken-things seemed pretty disoriented too. One of them snapped at the old man, who to Dar’s surprise suddenly sprang to his feet with considerable agility, leaping back at least six feet almost as soon as his feet had touched the ground. The chicken-thing squawked at him, but seemed to lose interest, wandering off toward the exit.
Another saw Dar coming, and turned toward him. It snapped at his ankles, but the fighter easily avoided its nipping bite—not that its little beak could have done much damage. He brought his club down in a solid two-handed blow, and like that the monster was little more than a smear on the stone.
“What’s the freaking big deal?” he asked nobody in particular. The second creature turned toward him, and he lifted his club to give it more of the same.
Varo let out a high-pitched whistle and pointed. The dire bat dove down to attack the third creature, the one that had missed the nimble old man. The huge bat swooped down and seized the cockatrice in its jaws, lifting back up into the air on a single powerful sweep of its wings.
It didn’t get very far. Within a few seconds, the bat stiffened and fell. It landed in a hard clatter, its petrified body shattering into a thousand pieces on the floor. The cockatrice, crushed by several hundred pounds of stone, did not survive.
Dar stared at the bat, and then at the thing trying to nip at his ankles.
“Holy freaking crap...”
Allera knelt beside Talen, pouring life into his body. Her healing power came at her call, but was almost interrupted as the wizard hit her with a powerful transmutation spell. But the healer was possessed of a considerable fortitude, and she resisted the
baleful polymorph.
“A healer, serving the wretched children of Orcus?”
“I serve the Light!” Allera yelled back at their unseen adversary. She gently shook Talen, adding her will to the power of her magic. The fighter groaned, and stirred as she wiped frost from his face.
“Talen... Talen, we need your strength...”
A ragged, almost feral cry drew her attention up, and her eyes widened in surprise.
Dar dodged back as the last cockatrice snapped at him. He had suddenly gotten really,
really interested in not getting hit, having seen what the things had done to Varo’s bat. The creature was fast, but Dar’s club was just as quick, and finally the two met, leaving the cockatrice shuddering out the last of its life from its broken body.
Relieved, Dar heard the same scream that had alerted Allera, and he turned around.
The old man seemed to have recovered quickly as well, and as he saw Varo approaching him, he settled into a ready fighting stance. “I am not your enemy,” the cleric said, pointing at the approximate location of the wizard. “The wizard that did this to you is over there,” he said, careful not to provoke the man with any sudden movements.
Both men turned in time to see the mad elf, shrieking a cry of animalian rage, charging at the wizard. The elf had no weapon, but he ignored the
repulsion field, surging forward to leapt out into thin air. Somehow, he either sensed or guessed the transmuter’s position, for he settled upon
something, hovering in mid-air, crawling over it, tearing, scratching, and biting.
The wizard shouted in surprise and alarm, although he didn’t seem to be injured, not yet. As the companions watched, the wizard became visible, likely as his
greater invisibility spell finally expired. He was a slight man, clad in a gray robe similar to that worn by the woman they’d encountered earlier. But his was cowled, and a swatch of fabric covered his face, although now it was twisted as the elf continued to tear frantically at him. A bevy of
mirror images surrounded him, but it was easy in this case to distinguish the true wizard, for only one had a crazy elf trying to bite his head off. Thus far the elf’s attacks had had little effect; the wizard was also protected by
stoneskin.
The wizard held a wand in his hand, and he managed to point it at the elf clinging to his upper body. “Mutatio!” he yelled.
The elf shrieked again, lifted his arms into the air, and fell to the ground. By the time he hit the stone, he was a two-inch long white mouse.
The wizard did not have much time to savor his victory. Talen fired another magical arrow into his torso. The mage’s
stoneskin absorbed the shot, but the way he clutched at his side indicated that he had certainly felt it.
“Now, you burn,” the wizard said calmly.
But before he could summon his
fireball, he had to content with a new threat, as the old man and Varo rushed at him from the side. Both overcame the potency of the
repulsion field, and launched attacks at the spot where the wizard had been standing when the elf had attacked. The wizard cleverly drew a short distance back, allowing his
mirror images to shuffle around him, masking his true location once more. The old man responded by closing his eyes, and using his other senses to try and divine the foe’s location. His first lunging strike, however, hit only empty air. Varo followed behind him, casting a
cure serious wounds spell upon himself as he came.
Talen fired his bow again, hitting an
image and causing it to vanish. “Dar!” he yelled. “Help them... shoot the images!”
The fighter nodded, unlimbering the shortbow he’d taken from Argus’s body. But the bow had just taken too much abuse in their travels through the dungeon. He strung it without difficulty, but as soon as he drew back an arrow, the ragged string snapped.
“Damn it!” he cursed.
Allera continued to bolster them, healing them all with a
mass cure light wounds spell.
Thus far, the wizard’s layered wards had protected him from serious harm, but he seemed to realize that the initiative had begun to shift against him. He blasted the old man with a volley of
magic missiles, causing him to stagger and fall back. But the old man was surprisingly durable, and he remained standing. As Talen hit another
mirror image, the wizard turned and headed for the door.
Before he could get to it, he found himself confronted by Licinius Varo.
"Mutatio!" he yelled, lifted his wand and pointing it at the cleric. But nothing happened.
“Dagos protects me,” the cleric said. “And destroys those who offend Him.” He stepped forward and grabbed the hand holding the wand, unleashing an
inflict critical wounds upon the mage. The wizard’s
stoneskin and other protections were of no avail against the divine energies of the spell, although his will was such that he was able to withstand the worst of the effects.
The wizard tore himself free from the cleric’s grasp. He reached into a pocket of his robe, but before he could do anything further, the old man caromed into him from behind, taking his knees out and knocking both to the ground. “Your foul workings shall come to an end, Banth!” he cried out, in thickly accented Common.
The old man tried to get onto the wizard’s back, but Banth was surprisingly fast, and he rolled out of his grasp. Varo tried to help, but before he could grab the mage’s hand, the wizard took what he’d gotten from his pocket—a glass vial—uncorked it, and swallowed its contents.
“You wish to wrestle?” he said, cackling as he shouted words of power, “Then let us dance!”
Varo thrust his hands under the wizard’s cowl, pouring the energy of the strongest spell left to him into another
inflict wounds. But even as his power ravaged Banth again, the cleric could feel the man
changing. His lithe body under his robes began to swell, and his skin, already bolstered by his
stoneskin ward, grew rough and dense. The wizard’s head came up, and as he stared into Varo’s eyes, the cleric saw no intelligence there, only a furious battle rage that caught him aback.
The wizard sprang up, throwing the monk off him almost as an afterthought. He seized Varo around the throat, crushing his windpipe with hands that had suddenly become as strong as the grips of a vice.
“Dagos... rejects...” the cleric began. He tried to call upon his power again, but he could not get enough air into his lungs to speak the words.
Laughing deeply, Banth drew out a small dagger, and slammed it to the hilt into the cleric’s chest. Varo’s body spasmed, and the mage hurled him against the nearby wall. Varo hit the stone with a heavy smack, and fell limp to the ground.
The old man’s fist, held as rigid as a dagger’s blade, came crashing down onto the back of Banth’s neck. The blow should have snapped his spine, but instead Banth merely turned, and smiled down at the old man. Somehow, he’d gotten
taller as well.
The old man held his ground, but could not withstand a punishing blow as Banth punched him with the fist still holding the dagger. The hilt shattered the man’s jaw, and he collapsed like a marionette that had had its strings abruptly cut.
“Over here, wizard!” came a yell. Banth turned in time to get smashed hard in the chest by Dar’s club, hurled by the fighter. The missile staggered the wizard, but augmented by the
transformation spell, he recovered quickly. He lowered his head and charged the fighter, holding his dagger as though it were a sword.
Dar, unable to close due to the lingering effects of the
repulsion field, drew his punching dagger and waited for him.
The two collided hard into each other, and somehow it was Dar who gave way. Banth shrieked and stabbed his small knife deep into the fighter’s side, drawing it back covered in bright red blood. Dar grimaced and countered with a thrust of his own dagger into the wizard’s body, but the force of the blow was blunted by the wizard’s
stoneskin, augmented by the toughening of his hide from the
transformation spell. Gleefully, he swept the dagger up, going for the fighter’s jugular, but catching the bottom of his jaw instead. A bright spray of red erupted from the wound as the wizard opened his enemy’s flesh to the bone.
Talen tried to come to Dar’s aid, but was still held at bay by Banth’s
repulsion. Until the wizard closed with him deliberately, there was nothing he could do to reach him. He fitted his last magical arrow to the string, but with the two foes in such close quarters, he couldn’t release his shot without risking hitting Dar instead.
Gnashing his teeth in frustration, the captain watched and waited for a shot.
Allera had rushed over to where Varo had fallen. The cleric lived, but he was barely conscious, trying and failing to push himself up on his arms. Blood continued to fountain from the deep puncture wound in his chest, spreading in a widening puddle on the ground.
“Hold,” she said, kneeling beside him.
“We... must... defeat...”
“I know,” she said. “But you won’t be of any help if you can’t move.” She’d already gone through all of her higher-powered spells, but she cast a
cure moderate wounds spell on the injured cleric, which closed the oozing wound and wrought a great improvement in his appearance.
“Help the old man,” he directed her, as he fought back to his feet.
Dar and Banth continued to trade blows, stabbing their weapons into each other’s body with violent abandon. But the wizard’s
stoneskin continued to absorb most of the force of Dar’s hits, while the fighter, lacking such protection, was taking a beating.
Finally, the wizard thrust his knife into his foe’s side a second time, and Dar went down, dragging Banth with him. The fighter’s punching dagger went flying out of his grasp. Blood spurted from Dar’s wounds as the wizard lifted his dagger and thrust down for a killing blow. Dar caught the wizard by the wrists and arrested the dagger with its point mere inches above his throat. Even with the augmentation of his magic, Dar was stronger, but the wizard wasn’t bleeding out from several penetrating knife wounds.
The blade quivered in the air, the descended another inch, the point dripping blood that fell in splotches on the fighter’s exposed throat. Then another inch, until the steel touched his flesh.
“Time to die, warrior,” the wizard hissed, his voice scratching.
But suddenly, Banth reared up, his face twisting in agony. Varo stood behind him, his hands wrapped around the wizard’s throat, unleashing yet more destructive energy into his body. Banth snapped back his elbow, smashing it into Varo’s face. The cleric fell back, but in that instant Dar ripped the knife from the wizard’s grasp, and buried it to the hilt in his body.
Banth looked down at him. “Well played,” he said. Blood poured from his lips as he looked down at the hilt extending from between two ribs.
And then he toppled over, dead.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
